Per Second Billing Compulsory for Mobile Operators: TRAI

Telecom Regulatory Authority India (TRAI) announced its new rule as a mandatory thing for all the telecom network operators. As per this rule, all the operators should give per second billing option to customers. When TATA DOCOMO started GSM Services in India, they started announcing "Per second billing" option which attracted the Indian people and they became one among the top in the subscriber base with in few months from launch and they are doing very well in India. Just to compete with them other operators also started following the same “Per second billing" option.

TRAI said that all the operators should have up to 25 different tariff plans in which one should be "Per second billing" and it allows the operators to charge up to 4 times the existing tariff for premium services which includes calls and messages sent to TV & Radio contests etc. "The authority does not intend to restrict the growth of services involving content nor to curb the revenue streams available for the service providers," TRAI said.

Hindustan Zinc Q4 Results declined by 20%

India’s largest metal manufacturer Hindustan Zinc Ltd reported a 20% decline in 4th quarter profit, this is because of the lead and zinc prices fell drastically. Last year, 4th quarter they were able to make Rs 1,770 crore but in this 4th quarter the net income fell to Rs1410 crore. The company has announced its results on Friday after the market closed, so there was not much impact on the stock because of the Q4 decline. Stock gained 0.8% and closed at Rs 126.10 on April 20.

Zinc prices reduced by 16%, which is mainly required to rust-proof steel, the price averaged at $2,039 a tonne while lead fell 18% to $2,116 a tonne in the fourth quarter in London. This is the main reason for its Q4 Decline. Silver price rose by 2% to $32.6 an ounce. Silver is one of the precious metals which the company produces, it contributed some to its earnings.

When we look at the expenses of the company, it increased 17% to 16.4 billion rupees because of the higher royalty and fuel prices. Raw material costs more than doubled to 832.1 million rupees from 327.7 million rupees a year earlier. Its zinc production dropped 2% to 190,000 metric tons in the last quarter compared to last year Q4, while production of lead doubled to 37,000 tons, it said in an exchange filing on April 10. Silver output gained 77% to 88,000 tons.

No relaxation on Public shareholding Norms : SEBI

As per SEBI's Public shareholding Norms, all listed companies from public sectors have to have minimum 10% of public shareholding and the same will be 25% for private sectors. the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has said that it is not going to relax its norms that makes it compulsory for all listed firms to have, at least, 25% shareholding by the public.

SEBI chairman U.K. Sinha said on March13 that all listed companies from both public and private sectors will have to raise public shareholding to a minimum of 10% and 25% respectively, within the deadline and there won't be any relaxation. For the private listed companies the deadline will be June 2013 and for the public sector firms it is August 2013. Some companies are thinking that the SEBI may relax its norms on public shareholding, but SEBI chairman clearly said that this time he is going to make it compulsory for both public and private companies listed in Indian stock market. As per the latest data (February) available, Around 181 non-PSU companies which hadn’t met the shareholding norms. He said about Rs 27,000 crore will have to be mobilized by June 2013 by private sector firms and Rs 12,000 crore by public sector firms

Already many promoters of major real estate firms and private airline promoters are holding more than 80% stake in their companies. if they are not going to regulate them self then they will be affected by SEBI norms.

While talking about Initial Public Offering (IPO) process, Sinha said SEBI will come out with new guidelines on MIMPS (Manner of Increasing and Maintaining Public Shareholding in Recognized Stock Exchanges) in the another 2 months, he added.

Infosys total dividend for fiscal 2011-12 is Rs 47/share

One of the leading IT company Infosys on March13 announced that the dividend of Rs 22/share for the year 2011-12, this will be the final dividend for fiscal 2011-12.
During Board of directors meeting they have decided the dividend amount after seeing their results went up by 27.4% in the 4th quarter. They conveyed the same to Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and board of directors had also recommended a special dividend of Rs10/share for its BPO (business process outsourcing) completing 10 years.
In the third quarter, based on first and second quarter results Infosys gave an interim dividend of Rs15/share in Oct 2011 which is first half (April-Sept 2011) of fiscal 2012.
Including the present dividend announcement, in the last fiscal 2011-12, the total dividend from Infosys will be Rs47/share which includes the special dividend as well. With this the investors who invested in Infosys will get profit of Rs 47/share.
In March 12, Infosys was closed at Rs 2,750 and in march 13, it went all the way down to 2,403 which is around 12,6% down

Infosys plans to recruit 35000 people in 2013

Infosys announced that it will recruit 35000 more people in a year. in which around 13000 employees will be for BPO Operations and the remaining people will be working in Infosys technologies and subsidiaries.

“We are going to add 35,000 more people next year, which includes 13,000 people for the BPO operations,” Infosys Chief Financial Officer V. Balakrishnan said.

In the last quarter (4th quarter) Infosys including its subsidiaries hired 10,676 employees for the year 2012; currently the total strength was 1, 49,994 as on March 31. Along with this announcement Infosys announced it results today and reported a 27.4% jump in overall net profit at Rs 2,316 crore in the fourth quarter of FY’12, as against Rs 1,818 crore in the fourth quarter of FY’11.

Apart from the Indian recruitment, they are planning to hire around 1,200 employees in the US. In the past 2 years, it hired 1,200 employees in the US each year.

Suzlon subsidiary REpower got new order in UK

One of the india's power sector major and Wind turbine maker Suzlon announced its subsidiary REpower which UK based one has won an order from Renerco to supply eight 2.05 MW turbines for its 16.4 MW Cotton Farm wind farm in Cambridgeshire. REpower would be supplying 8 MM92 wind turbines which will be having a rated output of 2.05 MW each. once this is installed for Cotton Farm wind farm, then they will be able to supply power to nearly 10,000 homes in a year, This constraction is scheduled to start in Oct 2011 and is expected to be completed by Feb 2013.

"This is the 2nd order we have got from Renerco. Earlier we won the contract to supply five MM92 turbines for its earls hall wind farm in Dec 2011. The cotton farm wind farm adds to our growing portfolio with Renerco, and we look forward to working with them again," REpower UK MD Rick Eggleston said. Since its launch in 2004, REpower UK has delivered 37 onshore wind farms in England, Scotland & Wales and two offshore wind farms, with this order Renerco will be completely busy in 2012 to complete the major portion of work. This may help them to prove again in this wind turbine field. because of this the relationship between Renerco and REpower will get strengthen.

As of now suzlon is trading in indian stock market at very low price. today, it got ended with 24.45. If they get some more new projects they can bounceback from this lower level.

Petrol pump owners planning for nationwide strike from April 23, 2012

Petrol pump owners are planning to go for a countrywide strike from April 23. initially petrol pump dealers were demanding commission of Rs 393/kilolitre petrol and the ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas has increased the price to Rs 281/kl.

The Federation of All India Petroleum Traders were not happy with this small increase in commission and this was very low compared to the recommendations given by the Apoorva chandra committee, appointed by the ministry. So the Petrol traders association wrote a letter to Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas, Jaipal Reddy, stating that the failure in implementing the commission increase made them to go to extreme step of strike. There are 3300 petrol pumps are part of this Federation of All India Petroleum Traders (FAPT) so all these petrol pumps in india will be participating in the strike from April 23.

If this happens people would be getting affected adversely. I would suggest people to take a precautionary measure such as filing the tank full on April 22nd may help you up to certain extent.

Bharti Airtel planning to start 4G services in one month

India's telecom major Bharti Airtel is planning to start 4G services in india. already they started working with Qualcomm to get 4G license for Rs 6000 crore, Airtel on Tuesday(april10,2012) said it will be ready to launch 4G services in Bangalore in a month time.

"We will be ready for launching it (4G service) in Bangalore in 30 days time. We have selected Huawei (as network equipment vendor) for Bangalore," Bharti Airtel CEO Sanjay Kapoor told reporters in a call.

Today, Bharti Airtel announced that they are planning to launch 4G telecom service using TD-LTE technology in Kolkata. Chinese telecom equipment giant ZTE has been selected as a network provider for providing technology, equipments and service for 4G.

In indian stock market, the share went to 325.40 and its trading at 326.90 range which is approximately 1% down and it touched an intraday high of Rs 330.

It was trading with volumes of 117,913 shares. In the yesterday trading session, the share closed at Rs 330.35 which is 0.02% or Rs 0.05 down. Airtel's trailing 12-month (TTM) EPS was at Rs 20.32 per share. (as on Dec, 2011). Its's price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio was

16.16. The latest book face value of the company is Rs 115.42 per share. At present value, the price-to-book value of the company was 2.85. The dividend yield of the company was 0.3%.

IGATE Planning to delist PATNI from stock market

US Based IGATE acquired PATNI computer systems for $1.2B in january 2012. IGATE listed in Nasdaq and now they are going to delist patni from indian stock market by paying Rs 520 per share against its floor price of Rs 356. altogether IGATE will spend $272 million to delist patni computer systems from stock market.

The company has received 15.9 million shares so far and it will all be saved in an Escrow account, Mr Phaneesh Murthy, CEO of iGATE Patni, said at a press conference. The other shareholders have another year to surrender their shares, he said.
The company development won't be having any major impact of the operational side of the business but will cover the way forward in iGATE Patni's plans to rebrand the company and remove “Patni” from the brand name, Mr Murthy said.

Based on the performance of the company in the 4th quarter of 2011, the company has received a loan extension to $265 million from bankers, Mr Murthy said. This brings the total debt to $1,035 million including the $770 million debt it had taken in April 2011 to complete the acquisition.

Infinity planning to invest Rs 1000 crore in Assam

Infinity Group is planning to invest Rs 1,000 crore in Assam in another 3-4 years. Kolkata based Infinity is one of the real estate major and they are planning enlarge their footprints in the corporate offices and residential apartments segment.
"We are looking at investing around Rs 1,000 crore in Assam for various projects over next 3-4 years. Though we are now concentrated in Guwahati only, we are also exploring possibilities of expanding our business to other cities and also other states in the North East," Infinity Group Chairman Ravindra Chamaria said.
He said tier-2 cities(eg: Guwahati) offer huge opportunities in the real estate segment due to an economy growth and growing wealth among middle class and upper middle class people.
"We will be launching Guwahati's first IT Park at Madhgharia locality in the city within the next few months. It will have an area of 20 lakh square feet and will have food court, office space and residential area, among others," Chamaria said .
"Besides, work is on for a mass housing complex in the city to cater to the mid segment residential market. It will have around 700-800 flats of 1,200-1,800 square feet," he added.

FII Investment in india very low

The total investment by FIIs in Indian stock market during 2011-12 is Rs 47,935 crore and which was the ever low in the past 3 years. As per the SEBI data, In 2010-11 it was Rs 1.1 lakh crore and Rs 96,857 crore during fiscal year 2009-10.
The same kind of trouble situation happened in 2008. In 2008-09 fiscal year, Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) had sold shares worth Rs 47,706 crore which brought the market completely down. Because of global economy slowdown,inflation, interest rates, revised norms and the rupee fall made the foreign investors to be very cautious in financial year 2011-12.
But in Jan-March 2012 period of the fiscal saw good FII inflows in the market. In Rs 47,935 crore, Rs 43,951 crore came during the last quarter of FY12. with the current FII inflows the market will be looking good in the near future and one can start investing from now on.
"FIIs have been infusing money into the Indian market due to change in RBI's monetary policy that has added liquidity to the system. This liquidity will help in growth of the country," Wellindia executive director Hemant Mamtani said."Indian market will continue to witness inflows in the whole year, if the liquidity conditions remain strong," he added.

Toyota car assembly unit in Bangalore

One of the Japanese automotive major Toyota announced that it plans to assemble its first class sedan, Camry locally in India and they decided to have their assembly unit in its Bangalore factory only. From July they are planning to start the assembling of cars and by August end it will be available in the market with new revised price.

So far Toyota used to import its premium car Camry from Japan and that too they will be importing around 250 – 300 cars only. Other competitors are assembling the same segment cars in India. For eg Skoda Superb, Volkswagen Passat & Honda Accord.

For the cars imported to India which is completely assembled in other country, then the importing the duty will be around 100% which will double the car price in India. Now Camry price will become cheaper as its going to get manufactured here locally.

Toyota Camry will be priced above Rs 20 lakh but the exact price will be announced during the launch. The company is already exporting its entry level Etios and Liva to South Africa. By this year only they are planning to export 20,000 units of both type of cars South Africa.